For the google program review, I chose to look at Google’s Picassa, a photo editing program. This program is a simplified, free version of PhotoShop. It obviously is free, so this helps cut costs for schools if they have traditionally used PhotoShop, which is a good thing considering the predicament the state is in now.
Because Picassa is simplified, it has both its benefits and its drawbacks in the classroom. One of the benefits is that it is pretty easy to use. Students can easily upload and share photos over a blog or email using a little tool bar at the bottom of the window. They can also easily apply basic changes to an image. These basic settings include cropping and color adjustment, which is exactly what we usually use in journalism, so I think this could be beneficial for my students. It is unethical for students to change much else in their photos for the newspaper. Another benefit is that time it will take a teacher to learn and teach students how to use the program. It doesn’t look like it would take long to show students how to use it, and there aren’t as many adjustment options for them as in PhotoShop, so it would be easier. Because there aren’t as many options though, students aren’t able to create art using Picassa, like they can in PhotoShop. My sidebar editor would be pretty disappointed if we got rid of PhotoShop and used Picassa instead.
If a teacher wants students to be creative when using photos, they most likely will prefer PhotoShop to Picassa because of some of the advanced features PhotoShop offers. For example, if a teacher is having students create digital stories and wants the stories to be accurate, without many manual changes made to the image, Picassa may be the easy route to go. If the teacher wants students to manipulate the photo though, Picassa will probably not be the best program for them.
As for organization and sharing, Picassa does have some pretty cool features. It allows people to be tagged in photos, so it will be easy for students (which is especially good in journalism) to find photos of certain individuals. They can also apply places to the photos and even place the photos on Google Earth, which could serve a teacher well depending on the assignment. As I also mentioned before, there are easy click buttons that allows the user to send photos via email or upload them to a blog.
You are absolutely correct. Picasa is a basic digital editing program. It's usually the first program I introduce my students to, as a stepping stone to more complex editing programs. If students want to add some special effects - Picasa does have color filters and special effects you can apply to images. You have to do it in stages, if you want to combine several effects. Applying one effect - saving the file - then adding a new effect to the image - etc. The price is right, as you so wonderfully pointed out, for students and teachers, alike=8-)
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